Raising Atlantis

19

Inside Ice Base Orionon the surface,Colonel O’Dell was playing poker with Vlad Lenin and two other Russians in the mess hall module when their plastic cups of vodka began to shake and the Klaxon sounded.

O’Dell looked at the puzzled Vlad. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the Russians. He darted out of the mess module, Vlad right behind him.

A group of Americans and Russians were already huddled around the main monitor screen inside the command center when O’Dell ran in. The display was blinking SOLAR EVENT.

“That can’t be right,” said O’Dell, stepping into the circle of concerned faces.

A lieutenant called up the computer display for CELSS, the Controlled Environmental Life Support System that kept the crew alive in space and in Antarctica. He located the sensor that was giving the abnormal reading.

“The readings are coming from below, sir,” he said, holding on to the console as the shaking intensified. “The only other explanation I can think of is the SP-100.”

O’Dell cast an involuntary, nervous glance at Vlad, who did not seem to comprehend what the lieutenant had said. The SP-100 was Ice Base Orion’s compact nuclear power plant, a hundred-kilowatt system buried a hundred yards away behind a snow dune.

“My God.” O’Dell took a deep breath. “Dosimeter readings?”

“I’ve got penetration of the outer wardrooms at two hundred seventy rems, sir. I’m recording sixty-five rems here in the command center, with each of the crew absorbing fifteen rems. We’re still below the safety threshold.”

But it was the shaking that was scaring the daylights out of O’Dell and the Russians. “Now what?”

“No choice, sir,” the lieutenant said. “We’ve got to retreat to the doghouse.”

The doghouse was an Earth capture vehicle under the command center and supply tanks, shielded from the SP-100’s high-energy protons by the command center’s aeroshell.

“Get as many of the crew inside as possible,” he ordered.

The American crew quickly obeyed and ditched the command center in orderly fashion. The Russians, however, looked around the empty command center, then dashed in the opposite direction to the outer air lock and their Kharkovchankas.

“Wait!” O’Dell called as he ran after them.

But they had cracked open the inner and outer doors and escaped by the time he reached the air lock. A blast of snow slapped O’Dell’s face as he grabbed a freezer suit, goggles, and gloves from the nearest storage compartment and ran outside.

The Russians were starting up their Kharkovchankas. O’Dell raced toward the row of Hagglunds transports and grabbed the door of the nearest forward cab.

“Where the hell do they think they’re going?” he said out loud, intending to hail them from the Hagglunds. The last thing he needed was Yeats or Kovich or the U.N. blaming him for more Russian deaths.

He was about to scramble aboard his Hagglunds when he felt a jolt. He looked down as a crack in the ice shot past his feet. His mouth opened in horror, and then he felt something sharp clamp down on his glove. It was Nimrod, Yeats’s dog, frantically pulling him with his teeth.

“Get out of here!” he yelled as he opened the door, but Nimrod jumped into the cab.

O’Dell heard what sounded like a series of thunderous explosions and looked back to see the base break away like an iceberg. Then he felt a rumble and watched in horror as the ice beneath him began to spiderweb.

The ice was melting!

He jumped into the cab with Nimrod. As soon as he closed the door, the Hagglunds lurched forward and back. Cracks radiated out on the ice below. My life is over, he thought, when the fiberglass cab dropped into the swirling, freezing water and was washed away. Then, feeling the transport bob up and down, he nearly choked with elation. “Goddamn, it does float!” he screamed to Nimrod, who was leaping from seat to seat in a frenzy.

The Russian Kharkovchankas, however, were dropping like stones beneath the bubbling surface of the icy waters.

O’Dell frantically switched on the windshield wipers. As the sheets of water were temporarily whisked away, he glimpsed a churning landscape. There was no Ice Base Orion, only what looked like a mushroom cloud forming in the air. For a wild moment he thought the reactor had blown, but the SP-100 didn’t possess the destructive power he was witnessing.

Another shock wave sent his head to the floor beneath the dashboard. He heard his skull crack against something sharp as the cab spun wildly away, Nimrod barking incessantly.